2215 Alpha Centari: The last day
I have fought and died a thousand times, I have suffered and bled on the moons and wastelands of this galaxy. I was not bred or forced nor condemned to this fate. I chose it!
I summon my fleeting strength and spit in the face of my killer. He moves to strike, to deliver the sweet relief of death but my laughter stops him. He does not know it yet but I am his death. As the old stories say, death is beholden upon a pale horse.
He pushes me back into the muck and I see it so clearly. The red blood in the sand and the broken bodies of my men paint a picture my dying corpse clings to. No no i am not a corpse but a prophet. A Herald of the Galactic doom.
Humanity was born into a galaxy of terror of Horrors and destruction. We thought the stars would bring us wisdom and hope but it was not to be. Once we reached out we found nothing but fire, ash, destruction and death. The galaxy was filled with nothing but predation where only the strong survived.
Our beautiful blue planet was reduced to ashes before our eyes by these monsters. They came in force and came with hatred and with overwhelming superiority. It was as beautiful as it was deadly.
The surgical precision of their brutality had to be admired because we were helpless before them. But, even as they exterminated us they could not know that our mother had prepared us for this. Earth has died so many times yet like the stubborn bitch she is, she rebuilt.
We fled in our fastest ships to the farthest corners of our galaxy and built a new home among the death and destruction. We built refuges and citadels in the space between the stars. We clung to life like those condemned to die.
If our galaxy offered naught but death then that is what we would become. And for the first time in our long history of destruction we were united. Not in hope of joyful prosperity but in the quest for revenge. We would become a plague on this galaxy we would cast aside our mercy and our better selves. We would become the end of all things, the masters of destruction and the heralds of death.
And so I and countless like me were born into a society which wanted nothing but peace yet was cornered and forced to become the 4 riders of the apocalypse. As once was written to now become reality. We made great machines to preserve our minds and give them to new bodies.
Every defeat, every death, every failure preserved, remembered, felt, mourned. For every safe haven destroyed 3 more took their place, we fucked and bred and spread ourselves between the black Sea. And we ceased to be human. Instead we became conquest, famine, war and death.
I was taught in school to reach back beyond our glorious ideals and hopes. To reach for our primal hatred and our drive to watch it all burn. And as my laughter died and the spear pierced my heart I smiled.
Yet I did not die, my eyes opened once more with yet another glorious beautiful scar upon my psyche. Fore we are now endless and damned. Yet we shed no tears, we sing no songs, we pray to no gods, we simply are. And as step forth from the cloning vats with a new stronger body I see it.
A fleet, no an armada, no no a tidal wave of ships, arms, men, women, and machines. Fashioned in the likeness of the end of all things. We will unleash wave after wave after wave of death upon these stars. We will crack their worlds and bathe the galaxy in the purity of fire. We will take no quarter, we will deliver no mercy, we will become, no no not will, we are become death the destroyer of worlds.
300 years later….
I stand now before the very beast that ended me so long ago. It begs for mercy, it grovels at my feet and I feel nothing. I lift the pathetic creature up and my armored hand punches into its chest cavity to extract its heart. I crush the weak flesh between my fingers and feel the warm blood in my hand. It's perfect, beautiful and sweet.
This galaxy will kneel before us, and we will accept their surrender then we will cleanse these pitiful creatures. And I think back on a quote from the stories of old… "And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth."
100 years later….
And now we must leave you our children fore we do not And cannot live among you in this paradise we have created. The words seem right and they are truth yet I feel something… regret and shame fore I know peace never lasts and one day our children will come to us and seek our purifying fire once more.
Excerpts from the 7th book of blood.